EFF wants $30,000 to defeat a podcasting patent troll

In a single day, tech legal group raises nearly $11,000 of its lofty goal.

On Thursday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced that it was launching a new fundraising campaign to defeat a pretty blatant patent troll: Personal Audio LLC, a company that claims to have invented podcasting.

We covered the EFF's effort when it first launched in early 2013, after Personal Audio sued a few big-name podcasts including the Adam Carolla Show and Stuff You Should Know podcasts.

The EFF says it needs to raise money specifically to pay for an “inter partes review,” a trial proceeding that examines prior art. A 2011 piece of federal legislation called the America Invents Act gave the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) greater authority over its own fees, and those fees have since skyrocketed.

“[The inter partes review fees] will cost approximately $25,000 and we'll likely have other costs as well,” Julie Samuels, the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents at the EFF, told Ars. “The types of reviews we did in the older patent busting cases had fees of approximately $2,000. Big difference, obviously, and further proof that the patent system is stacked against the little guy.”

At the time of this writing, the EFF has received nearly $11,000 in donations towards a total goal of $30,000.

Update: This patent seems to have really struck a nerve. EFF raised the $30,000 needed in less than 10 hours—and money kept coming in. There's now more than $47,000 donated to the cause less than 24 hours after the fundraiser was announced.